


the sun must go on rising

by littleleotas



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Inspired by Hades and Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 08:48:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22377811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleleotas/pseuds/littleleotas
Summary: Hades/Persephone AU. Shepard offers Garrus a much different life than the one of which he lately grew sick and tired.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian
Comments: 24
Kudos: 32





	1. lethe

The reality of infinity is impossible to comprehend. There is simply no way to get the mind around the concept of something without end. It is simultaneously everything and nothing; it is not only this galaxy and everything it contains but every other galaxy, those we know about and those we never will, and it is void, a bottomless pit that stretches into the sky and on and on until it is no longer anything’s sky but simply darkness.

Through the endless dark sails a ship. People speak of her captain in fear, in awe, and in contempt. Some speak of her acts of mercy, and some of her cruelty; some speak of her as a caretaker, and others of her as a plague. To some she is a candle in the darkness, and to others she is the darkness itself.

What is true of her is that death is her domain. She is not always its bringer, but all comers surrender to the abyss of which she is queen. In the infinite she travels, becoming infinite herself.

* * *

Garrus Vakarian saw death as a punishment. Those who shed blood deserved to have their own blood shed. It was a nice, tidy, complete cycle. His superiors, more idealistically-minded, hoped to prevent the spilling of blood in the first place, but Garrus was a realist. He knew there would never be an end to wrong-doing; thus, he felt obligated to be the one to right those wrongs.

Those idealistic superiors, however, had a different view of justice. Garrus saw no difference between vengeance and justice; indeed, vengeance _was_ justice enacted. His superiors, on the other hand, believed that no crime absolved officers of the law of turning that crime back on the perpetrator. They expected Garrus and everyone else under their command to uphold the moral standard they decreed. And Garrus never could abide by anyone’s law but his own.

Saren was hiding something. Innocent people don’t hide things. Spectres, especially, don’t hide things; they don’t need to. Anything they do is protected by the Council. The visibility of their actions is why they have such a bad reputation; they play fast and loose with the law, but they answer to a higher call. If a Spectre had done something worth hiding, it had to be something worth finding out.

But Garrus was not a Spectre, and he had to answer to his own superiors, who were uninterested in anything that could not be discovered by methods other than their own.

“Your investigation is over,” said the executor, turning and walking away before the red filling Garrus’s sight spilled into his words.

Every door he stood before seemed to slam in his face. He was expected to right wrongs, and oh, how he wanted to, but the means with which to achieve these ends were denied him. He felt as if he’d been thrown in the bottom of a pit and told to get out without a ladder.

And then, someone offered him a hand.

She seemed to walk out of the wall into the hallway. Soft petals fell from the flowering trees as she passed them. The red of her hair was like blood, shining dully in the dim light. Though he had never seen her before, he knew who she had to be.

“Commander Shepard?”

“Garrus Vakarian,” she replied, stopping on the stairs two steps below him. The corner of her mouth rose in a smirk. “You want to come with me.”

“Do I?” He felt his face flush with heat. It was an honest question; the things he had heard of her were both enticing and terrifying.

The gaze she fixed on him was too intense, slicing through him like an icy wind. He felt like she was staring at his very bones.

She chuckled to herself. “What, you’re having such a fine time up here?”

He turned his head towards where the executor had walked away. When he turned back, she was standing right in front of him. His mandibles flicked and his pupils widened. He hadn’t heard her move.

She tilted her head, her expression softening as she traced his jawline with one finger. Her lips parted just barely. The finger dropped when it reached his chin, but her gaze lingered on his mouth. His heart’s manic beat stuttered. It felt like the air had been sucked from the room, and he opened his mouth to gasp it in. She was a whole head shorter than him, but suddenly her face was up in his, only just avoiding contact.

“Saren is mine,” she whispered. He closed his eyes, swallowing hard, and felt her rest her chin on his shoulder. Her hot breath in his ear sent a shiver through him. “Come with me, and all that is mine is yours.”

Yes, yes, yes, his head filled with the answer yearning to break from his tongue. A part of him he had no desire to listen to clung to fear, suspicious of the woman who would hand the man with nothing a kingdom on a silver platter. “Why me?” His voice wavered in betrayal.

Slowly, she leaned back onto her heels, serenely holding his gaze, like a confident predator observing her caged prey. “You want what is mine. And I want you.”

His throat constricted. “But...why?”

Looking up at him through dark eyelashes, she interlaced her cold fingers with his. She rose on her toes again to whisper into his mouth. “Does it matter?”

What mattered, he thought, was that no one else was going to help him bring Saren to justice. No one else cared. What mattered was that good triumphed over evil. What mattered was that somehow, her cold touch kindled a fire within him that no water could douse.

“No.”

* * *

In space, the nights are endless. The Citadel’s artificial sun was no replacement for the penetrating warmth of Palaven’s, but it marked the passage of time. The eternal dim glow of the Normandy’s lights within and black skies outside made it impossible to tell one day from another.

The other inhabitants of the ship largely ignored him, scurrying along the hallways absorbed in their work. There were others like him, selected for a specific reason. The quarian, Tali, had intelligence that tied Saren to the geth attacks. The krogan, Wrex, was hired muscle.

“All I need is a good fight,” Wrex laughed. A vicious mirth coloured his every word, lending his statement credibility. “She didn’t have to offer me anything fancy.”

“I don’t need _fancy_,” said Tali indignantly. “I just need something to bring back to the flotilla. Something useful.”

“What is it?” asked Wrex.

Tali shrugged. “We’ll find it out there somewhere. I’ll know it when I see it.” She nodded toward Garrus. “What about you?”

He realised he wasn’t exactly sure what it was she had offered him. Saren, ostensibly, but she had said Saren was hers. It seemed silly to repeat the rest of what she had said. He felt foolish to have been so carried away; he wasn’t the only person to whom she’d made an offer. For all he knew, she’d offered everyone else the same thing. “Same as you,” he said, nodding to Wrex. “I’m just here for the fight.”

He estimated he had been aboard for two days before he saw her again. A call from an unfamiliar voice directed him to grab his gear and head to the airlock. When he reached it, she was already waiting there in matte black armour, her helmet under her arm. She grinned, baring her teeth when she saw him.

“There’s my knight in shining armour.” Her low voice felt like a hand gently touching the base of his spine.

He looked down at himself. He was still wearing his C-Sec armour, an old and battered matte blue and black get-up that even when new could never have been called ‘shining.’

“Not sure if shining’s what I’d call it,” he said. “Tarnished, maybe.”

“Don’t tempt me,” she replied, raising an eyebrow.

The amusement quickly left her expression as she looked over his shoulder. He turned to see Wrex approaching.

“Ready?” Shepard asked him.

He nodded. “Other than knowing what the hell the mission is.”

“We’re recruiting someone.” Ignoring their expectant looks, she said no more as she put on her helmet.

It was difficult to tell if the sky above the planet on which they landed was filled with smoke or simply the exact colour of smoke. Pools of lava boiled around them, broken up by thin lines of black dirt. Garrus boiled, too, in the double layer of his armour and the Mako. Both he and Wrex breathed heavier even after removing their helmets and gloves, but Shepard didn’t seem to break a sweat.

The road narrowed too much for their vehicle, so they continued on foot. Garrus and Wrex fired on the approaching geth, but Shepard never removed her gun from its holster. She lit up, surrounded in dancing, glowing ribbons of blue and purple light that flew from her fingers and into the geth. Watching the waves of geth fall at a flick of her wrist, it was easy to see how she had gained her reputation.

Descending into the mine felt like walking further into hell, from the bubbling lava pools of the surface down into the cold, cheerless caverns of the Prothean ruins. After riding down a series of progressively more dilapidated lifts, they encountered a blue barrier. Behind it floated an asari in mid-air, her arms outstretched.

“Hello? Can you hear me?” the asari said. Her voice was pitched high with panic.

“Yes.” Shepard removed her helmet as she took a step closer to the barrier. “Are you the child of Matriarch Benezia?”

Fear quickly set into her eyes. “I haven’t spoken to Benezia in years—”

“You want to learn more about the Protheans,” Shepard interrupted, holding the asari’s eyes with her piercing gaze.

The asari frowned. “I—yes, I have spent my life studying them, but what does that have to do with—”

“Things are happening,” Shepard interrupted a second time. She cocked a hip, smiling dangerously at the asari. “Don’t get that often, studying a dead race.”

“N-no, not usually,” the asari agreed.

“Come with me, and you’ll be at the forefront of it all. Every secret of the Protheans, yours to unravel.”

Garrus shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He didn’t know anything about Protheans, and Shepard certainly hadn’t mentioned them to him before. That didn’t mean she was lying to the asari; Shepard kept things close to her chest, it seemed. Wrex’s brow furrowed, and Garrus wondered if he knew what Shepard was talking about or if Wrex was just as in the dark as he was.

The asari glanced over her shoulder. “What if I say no?”

Shepard shrugged. “You’re smart. I’m sure you’d find a way out eventually. But you’re not going to say no.”

“You don’t know that.” She didn’t even sound as if she believed herself.

Shepard raised an eyebrow, smirking and exhaling sharply through her nose. “Let me put it to you this way. I’m not the only one in search of the best Prothean expert in the galaxy at the moment, and the next guys that ask aren’t going to offer you anything in return.”

The asari’s face darkened, but she set her jaw, returning Shepard’s gaze. The two of them stared each other down in silence for a moment before the asari spoke again. “Alright.”

As they turned to look for a way to get to the asari, a wave of geth crawled over the rocks toward them. Garrus rolled into a crouch behind a wall, resting his rifle on it as he lined up shots. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Shepard’s biotic glow knocking geth into the air. When the echo of the last shot faded away, Garrus stood up to see Shepard typing into a computer hooked up to a laser. The machine blasted a hole through the rock wall beneath the asari, and the small group moved through it to the other side.

“How did you get in?” the asari asked when they crawled out of the rocks. “The geth couldn’t find a way.”

Shepard smiled as she deactivated the trap. “I’m good with the underground.”

They rode up the elevator and had nearly made it out of the mine when a krogan captain and a handful of geth stood in their way.

“Hand over the asari,” the captain barked.

Lazily drawing her gun, Shepard turned to the asari. “Your call, kid.”

The asari glared at the captain. “I won’t go with you!”

Shepard shrugged theatrically. “Well, you’ve got your answer.”

The captain gestured to the geth and they advanced. Shepard stepped in front of the asari. “Stay back, Doctor,” she ordered, throwing a ball of biotic energy into a geth juggernaut.

Garrus, unable to tear his eyes from Shepard, nearly got trampled by the charging krogan, but Wrex jumped in front of him and headbutted the captain back. “Get it together, turian!” Wrex growled as he threw the captain aside.

Panting, Garrus ran behind a structural support and focused his rifle on the geth snipers across the room. His mind calmed to silence as he focused on a geth head in the crosshair. He forgot how much he liked battle when he was out of it; every worry and doubt and tension melted away as he focused on the task at hand. There was nothing but him, his rifle, and an evil it was his job to snuff out.

The last geth fell, and he stepped out from behind the beam. The battle was over, and Shepard holstered her gun before turning to the asari behind her. “You alright?”

“Yes,” the asari responded as she straightened up, brushing invisible dust off her tunic. “Thank you. I hate needing protection, but—well, thank you.”

Shepard nodded. “I protect my own.”

What struck Garrus most about their encounter, he mused as they returned to the ship, was that Shepard had told the asari why she needed her. She had a purpose, something tangible to offer their mission. He still had no idea what his own purpose was.

* * *

Garrus couldn’t sleep. The Normandy’s beds were designed with humans in mind, the room was too cold, and his brain refused to shut up. He tossed and turned for hours before admitting defeat.

Turning the corner outside the bunk room, he walked into the lounge. The window took up almost the entire wall, looking out into the endless night. He sat down on the sofa opposite the window, staring out at nothing for so long he lost track of the time before realising it wasn’t doing him any good. Shaking his head, he hit the button to close the shutter and walked over to the bar.

The backlit wall behind the bar shone through the bottles on the shelves, giving them a radioactive glow that didn’t seem entirely appealing. Most of them were human and asari liquors, but he found a relatively stately-looking bottle of turian brandy on the bottom shelf. He turned around to put the bottle on the counter, and found a clean, empty glass sitting there. He couldn’t recall if it had been there before. Shrugging, he poured himself a double and took a long sip, savouring the warmth as it moved down his throat.

“You’re taking your life in your hands with that,” Shepard’s voice came from the doorway.

He lowered his glass and looked up. She was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over her chest. She had traded black armour for a different column of black, with a silver and ruby fruit on a chain around her neck peeking out from beneath the capelet over her shoulders.

“I think I can handle my liquor,” he said, taking another sip before putting the glass down.

She chuckled. “Not what I meant.” She entered the room and took a seat on the other side of the bar.

He felt the brandy pool heavily in the bottom of his stomach. “What did you mean, then?”

“You haven’t figured it out yet?” She grinned, laying her arms flat on the bar as she leaned forward.

Garrus felt they were maybe having two different conversations. He hadn’t thought of another thing to say when Shepard pointed at a thin red bottle with a wide, nearly crescent-shaped base. “Pour me some of that, will you?”

He picked up the bottle and found another glass beneath the bar. She moved her hand toward the glass, tapping her fingertips against it in slow progression as he poured. Without asking, he made it a double.

When he finished pouring, she raised her glass, clearly expecting him to follow suit, and he did.

“What are we toasting?” he asked.

“Your call.”

His first instinct was, ‘To you,’ but that sounded stupid even in his head. He didn’t know where that thought had come from; it just seemed the thing to say for some reason. It bounced around his head and the echo was too loud to think of anything else.

“To the Normandy?”

She chuckled as she clinked her glass with his and took a long sip, closing her eyes and humming a little sound of pleasure before licking the remnant drops from her lips. He forgot to take a sip himself.

“You like the ship, huh?” she asked.

“Hm? Oh.” He blinked a few times, shaking himself out of the reverie he hadn’t realised he was in. “Yeah, yes. It’s nice.”

“Mm.” She kept tapping her fingers against the side of the glass. “It’s only as nice as the company.” The smile she looked up at him with was alarming in its sweetness; the walls she had built around her dropped, and for a moment, only a moment, she seemed like any other woman.

Garrus dropped his gaze to his drink and took another sip.

“You want to ask me something.”

With his head still tilted down, his eyes moved up to meet hers. He swallowed hard. Words seemed locked in his throat, scraping the sides with sharp corners.

“I...I don’t understand.”

“That isn’t a question,” she said, nonchalantly taking another sip of her drink.

His knees felt weak, but the only seats were on her side of the bar. It might mean something if he sat down next to her. It might not, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to take that chance yet.

“Why did you take me?”

She leaned back, still perched on her bar stool. “Because I want you.”

He shook his head. “You want the quarian for her intel, you want the asari for her knowledge—”

“And I want you for you.”

His superiors at C-Sec had often noted in his performance reviews that he was unfailingly stubborn, unable to comprehend information that didn’t at first seem to make sense. If it didn’t fit inside the narrative he already expected, he tended to dismiss it. This, however, didn’t feel dismissable.

It was not an answer—not really. It was a tautology, a meaningless repetition. But the logical side of his brain could only protest so much. He knew what she meant. He might fight that knowledge, but he knew.

He cleared his throat. “So, when you offered—I mean, when you said—uh—”

Silently, she reached across the bar and took his hand. She turned his palm upward and pressed a key into his hand, closing his fingers over it. “I meant it.”

She stood up and walked toward the door.

Before she reached it, the question he had really meant to ask escaped the cage in his throat. “Do you make that offer to other people?”

She paused at the door, catching his eye over her shoulder. “No.”

He looked down at the key. It had a ruby set into the bow. He slipped it into his pocket, and when he looked up, she was gone.

* * *

The Normandy’s crew sometimes seemed like ghosts, silently walking through the halls, heads bent over their work. Garrus wondered if he might accidentally walk through them one of these days. Amusing as the thought was, he still felt unsettled walking amongst them, and spent most of his time on the lower deck.

It had been a long time since he had had no work to do. No reports to file, no investigations to carry out. He’d disassembled and reassembled all his guns so many times he was beginning to worry they’d spontaneously fall apart in combat. The Mako couldn’t exactly be disassembled, but after the rough rides it went on, it could reliably use regular re-calibrations.

As he tightened a bolt in the undercarriage, he heard a clink from next to the vehicle. He looked to the side, expecting to see a part fallen loose, but instead saw Wrex’s hand holding a glass bottle on the floor. “Take a break,” he said, gruffly.

Garrus slid out from beneath the Mako, stood up, and took the offered drink. “What’s the occasion?”

“The occasion is you work too much,” Wrex said, grunting as he pulled a crate over in front of the one already placed by the Mako and sat down. “And you’re making me feel bad for standing around doing nothing.”

Garrus lowered himself onto a crate, keeping his back straight. “And what is it we’re doing now, exactly?”

“We’re _sitting_ around doing nothing.” Smiling smugly, Wrex tilted the bottle back and took a drink.

“Ah. That makes all the difference.”

“Mmhm.”

They sat in silence for a moment—only a moment, but it felt like an uncomfortable hour.

“So, why the Mako?” Wrex asked. “Don’t they have some human kid to do that?”

Garrus shrugged. “I just needed something to do.”

Wrex hummed thoughtfully, taking another sip. “What is it you’re here to do anyway?”

Garrus’s mandibles flicked. “To help catch Saren, same as you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Wrex grumbled, shifting his weight and leaning forward. “No one goes to the turians for muscle.”

“The turian military is the most effective in the galaxy,” Garrus bristled, then flushed with embarrassment. Where did that reflexive nationalism come from? Brainwashing in military training must’ve been more effective than he realised.

Wrex grinned, clearly holding back a laugh. “Uh-huh,” he said tightly.

Sighing, Garrus fixed his gaze on the bottle, more to avoid looking at Wrex than interest in its contents. It was half—something. He always would’ve said half-empty before, but now that felt unnecessarily pessimistic.

He spoke slowly, working it out as much to himself as to Wrex. “I’m here because I want to catch Saren. I couldn’t do it in C-Sec, and she offered me a way out.”

“Hmm.” Wrex nodded, seemingly impressed with Garrus’s candour. “What does she get out of it?”

“I don’t know.” He swallowed. It wasn’t untrue, but it also wouldn’t have been true to say he didn’t have some idea. He had been so consumed with finding out what it is that she wanted that he hadn’t given any thought to whether or not he wanted to give it to her.

“Not concerned she’s gonna sacrifice you to some Prothean god for luck or something?”

“No.” The conviction in his voice was unprecedented. He almost frightened himself with it.

Wrex shrugged. “Maybe you should watch out all the same. She’s a tricky one.”

“She’s not forthcoming. That doesn’t mean she’s dishonest.”

Shrugging again, Wrex drained the rest of his bottle. He stood, clapped Garrus’s back, and walked back across the shuttle bay.

* * *

He hadn’t really expected her to derail the mission just to help him tie up an old loose end. Before they boarded the Fedele, he asked her why she did it. She turned to look at him without a trace of a smile, her usually guarded face open and plain. “I take care of my own,” she said simply, and opened the door.

The ship was, at first, too quiet, and then appallingly loud. The shrieking of Doctor Saleon’s mutated test subjects, the disgusting squelching of liquids not worth identifying, the percussive gunfire and ominous hum of biotics filled the stale air.

In the ensuing silence, they made their way through the ship. It was, of course, behind the last door they opened that they found him.

“That’s him,” Garrus said. The metallic taste of blood was on the air he inhaled. “That’s Doctor Saleon.”

“What?” the salarian said. “I’m Doctor Heart.”

“That’s cute,” growled Garrus.

“Are you sure, Garrus?” Shepard asked. Her face was calm as polished stone. It was bewildering to Garrus, as flushed with fire as he felt. Justice was a trigger away.

“Yes.” He raised his gun.

He couldn’t raise it high enough. Confused, he looked down and saw a hand pushing it down. Shepard’s eyes stayed on Saleon as she halted Garrus.

“We’ll take him in for questioning,” she said. “We need information he has to keep this from happening again.”

Saleon spoke before Garrus could interject. “I don’t think so,” he said darkly, pointing a gun at Shepard.

Shepard sighed, drawing her own gun impossibly quickly and shooting Saleon between the eyes. He crumpled in a heap and Shepard holstered her gun, turning to Garrus.

His skin crawled with prickling heat. It choked him up, making his breath come in shallow, stuttered pants. “What was the point of that? I thought you came here to help me.”

Her eyes darkened as she met his gaze. “I know you’re frustrated.”

He laughed bitterly, turning on his heel and pacing. “You got that right.”

She grabbed his wrist. He stopped, burning cold like he’d been plunged in freezing water. “Killing him didn’t solve anything. That’s not what I wanted.”

He took a deep breath, but refused to turn around to look at her. “You knew I wanted justice,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “What did you want?”

“I wanted to make things right.”

“That’s the same thing.”

“No, it isn’t.”

She released her grip on his wrist. He glanced at her over his shoulder, still not facing her.

She continued, her voice almost imperceptibly quiet. “Death doesn’t solve problems. He died alone, in secret, on a single ship in the middle of nowhere. We’ll never know where his data’s gone, who he worked with. We haven’t stopped anything but a heart.”

Part of him was still furious with her. It felt like his C-Sec days all over again, his hands bound with the red tape of procedure. If he was honest with himself, though, he knew it wasn’t the same thing. It wasn’t procedure for the sake of procedure; it was the right thing, the difficult and unsatisfying thing, for the sake of making the world a better place. And what knocked the air out of him about that was the realisation that he had never really cared about making the world a better place. He had just wanted to make it even.

“Let’s go,” he said, still not looking at her as he started toward the airlock.

* * *

Garrus’s anger boiled away to nothing, but he remained so sullen about it he avoided Shepard for days. Not that she was commonly found wandering the ship anyway, but it was the principle of the thing. She continued asking him to come on missions, which he did, but he refused to speak to her more than was necessary.

He followed her to Virmire, which lifted his spirits annoyingly high. Suddenly he was _in_ the evidence for which he had spent so much time searching in vain. It was the answer to every question he’d asked. He didn’t mean to be ungrateful, but he wished the answer wasn’t as big as it was; if Saren had been the only problem, it was one that could be fixed, but Saren was merely a pawn of the Reapers, and suddenly their mission had tripled in size.

They cornered Saren on the tower. Garrus stood behind a crate, holding Saren in the crosshair of his scope as Shepard approached him. It would be so simple to take him out, only the space of an exhale between him and the end of the mission. But it wouldn’t be the end. He almost resented knowing that now.

“So this is why you’re selling out the galaxy?” Her gun wasn’t pointed at Saren, but it wasn’t holstered. Her gun was never the most dangerous thing about her, anyway. She put the hand that didn’t hold her gun on her hip. “Because you’d rather be a slave to the Reapers than fight?”

“Isn’t submission preferable to extinction?” Saren sneered.

Garrus frowned. As much as he tried to quash the good turian in him, he still found Saren’s argument repulsive. There was a reason the turian imperial anthem was called “Die for the Cause.” His own cause was no longer the turian empire, but the tendency toward death over dishonour was one thing he felt he and the greater turian civilisation could agree on.

It probably shouldn’t have surprised him that Shepard seemed to feel the same way. “Do you value life so little that you’d choose to live it like that?”

Saren laughed. A blue glow emanating from within him pulsed gently, visible through his thin skin. “Don’t lecture me. You of all people should know no one wants to die.”

“I know that fear of death is a pitiful excuse for giving up on life,” she spat.

Saren grabbed her by the throat, lifting her off her feet. Before he could think, Garrus’s finger squeezed the trigger. Saren deflected the bullet with a barrier, but Shepard used the distraction to punch him with a biotically glowing fist. He dropped her as he stumbled back, and she scrambled to her feet, firing her pistol aimlessly.

An alarm sounded and Saren leapt back onto his hovering platform. Shepard lowered her gun, glaring at him as he left. The Normandy appeared on the horizon, speeding toward their location. The fight with Saren wasn’t over, but that wasn’t a bad thing, after all.

Garrus turned to head into the ship, but stopped when he felt a hand take his.

Sweat dripped down Shepard’s face, but her expression betrayed no fatigue. The very faintest hint of a smirk played at the corner of her mouth without becoming anything more than a flicker. “Thank you,” she said.

He’d never been thanked for a mission before: not in the military, C-Sec, or from her. “For what?”

“What I brought you with me for.”

His mandibles fluttered uneasily. “Fighting Saren?”

She shook her head. “Understanding.”

That stubbornness reared its head again, refusing to accept the answer that had been in front of him the whole time. He wanted to say that if he understood her at all now, he certainly hadn’t before the business with Saleon, but he knew that wasn’t true. It was a deeper understanding, one that he had felt so deeply he hadn’t bothered to specifically acknowledge it. Everyone else around her feared her, or the version of her they misunderstood her to be. She wasn’t a bringer of death—she was its caretaker, trying desperately to let her domain be one of peace.

What he had always understood was that, while he was part of the living world, he had a responsibility to right wrongs, to hold fast to his principles, and to refuse to give in to despair. It was this that made Saren’s position so unpalatable to him. Saren gave in. Garrus could never do so.

But people would agree with Saren. People would want what they thought was the easier way. They would want to cling desperately to life, even if that life was not worth holding onto. And that was why Shepard needed him. Because he understood, and because he understood her. Protecting people from themselves is a thankless job. He wondered if she had always felt as lonely doing that job as he had, but of course, that answer was right in front of him as well; would she have brought him with her if she hadn’t?


	2. acheron

The ruby set in the bow of the key swallowed what little light there was in the cargo bay. Garrus moved the key back and forth, and with each movement the jewel seemed to take in the light that shone on it reflecting nothing back. He wondered if eventually it would take all the cargo bay’s light and leave them all in darkness.

The thought didn’t frighten him. Not that he was scared of the dark, but he had never been terribly fond of it. He liked things where he could see them. But now, something about the darkness seemed exciting, not in the way of anticipation but in the way of being excited, thrilled.

‘Something’ about it, as if he didn’t know what it was. Shepard was striking, and ferocious, and from the beginning he’d been excited to follow through on the fight no one but she would let him fight. There was more to it now, though. He had seen a side of her that didn’t make it into the stories. Everyone wanted to hear about the turning of her vengeful wrath on batarian slavers, or her righteous crusade against the dangerous outlaws of the fringes of space; no one wanted to hear that she tried to solve problems peacefully first, that her priority was her crew’s well-being and development, that she valued resolution over revenge. He wanted to be annoyed with her, to continue to feel as if his hands were tied by the red tape of her morality; instead, he was annoyed with himself that he wasn’t annoyed with her. He had already parsed the difference between her and his C-Sec superiors, and he respected her for making decisions with purpose and not just for the sake of procedure.

There was a nervousness that settled in his stomach that he couldn’t figure out. He trusted her, and he had thought that if he ever trusted someone completely, that anxious fear that always lingered in the back of his mind would disappear. Maybe knowing her meant knowing that if he ever did something wrong, she would hold him accountable, and that was what scared him. It was fear, not from knowing too much, but from knowing exactly enough. It didn’t feel like fear, though. Maybe it was just a different kind of fear.

“What’s on your mind?”

Garrus looked up to see Shepard standing in front of him, her eyes flicking between the key in his hands and his face. He stuffed the key back in his pocket as he stood up.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just...we’re close to catching Saren.”

She nodded, pressing her lips together as she crossed her arms over herself. She briefly glanced at the pocket in which he had put the key before taking a deep breath and looking up. “We are.”

“It...isn’t how I thought it would be.” His mandibles twitched twice and he rubbed the back of his neck.

She chuckled. Tension eased from her posture. “Is that good or bad?”

“Good, I think.”

“Mm.” She uncrossed her arms and clasped her hands behind her. “What will you do afterwards?”

He took a deep, slow breath. “I was thinking I’d go back to the Citadel. Apply for Spectre training. Do Saren’s job right.”

A curious, soft smile played on her face. Her eyes sparkled the same way the ruby in the key did: shining for a moment, swallowing the light. “You think you’re up for that?”

“Only one way to find out.”

Her smile widened as she nodded. “Yeah.” She angled herself slightly away from him, as if about to step away. “You know, you can stay if you want. Here, I mean.”

He swallowed hard. “I’ll think about it.”

“Do.” She touched his hand, not quite taking it, and lowered her voice. “And if you leave...remember I’ll always come back for you.”

Her fingers slipped from their loose hold and she walked away. The key burned in his pocket against his leg.

* * *

Spring meant life, joy, comfort, and exuberance. The Citadel burst into celebratory bloom as the days grew longer and warmer. Of course, on the Citadel, it was all artificial, meant to remind the humans of Earth. It never did much for Garrus.

He walked through the hallway of trees in the Citadel tower where he had first met her. The trees were dying then. Their fullness now seemed to mock him.

He had left the Normandy, after all. Made good on his promise to try to become a Spectre, a good one. He could tell himself all he wanted that it was a noble decision, that he had chosen this path out of a sense of duty and justice, that he hadn’t been too afraid of her to stay.

It might have been poetic to give her back her key, but he hadn’t. He hadn’t even tried. Maybe some part of him always knew he’d fail at being a Spectre. And she’d be back for him.

Everything he thought he had learned from her, if it was still in his head, seemed just out of reach. It made sense when she was around, when she explained it, but when he had to make a call or answer a question during Spectre training, the words wouldn’t come. He was tired of trying to impress people. He had never had to try to impress her.

He leaned back against a wall in a wards access corridor nursing a beer. Nearby, two human C-Sec officers he didn’t recognise argued over raising their concerns about a volus tax dodger to their superiors. While they were lost in their argument, an asari on the other side of him sold 3000 credits worth of red sand to a twitchy salarian. Garrus felt too weary to do anything about it.

A voice coming from a screen in the corner droned on with the news, reporting in an emotionless monotone. Violent crime was up by 35% on Omega, which seemed like a steep jump even for Omega. Human colonies were petitioning the Council for increased representation, and the krogan, volus, and elcor were petitioning for any representation at all. The SSV Normandy was destroyed over Alchera—

Garrus’s blood froze. Sharp ice shards seemed to pierce him from the inside out. He pushed himself off the wall, elbowing people out of the way as he tore across the room to stand next to the screen. There was no video feed, but he stared at it anyway.

“—reports that several escape pods were recovered,” the voice continued, “but the commanding officer was not among the survivors.”

He didn’t remember making it back to his apartment. Proper procedure probably dictated that he officially quit, and fill out half a million forms, and give notice for breaking his rental agreement, and it all seemed so damn unimportant.

He opened the top drawer of the dresser. The key lay, sparkling dully, in the back of the drawer. He slipped it onto a chain, fastened it around his neck, picked up his bag, and turned off the lights.

* * *

Omega felt less like a space station and more like an organic body. The narrow passageways were blood-filled veins, slick and red and diseased, and every vein led back to Purgatory. No matter the song playing, Purgatory pulsed with a heartbeat, a deep bass that could be felt as much as heard.

If Garrus were more full of himself, he would consider himself a white blood cell, floating through Omega’s veins and attacking the sickness. It’s what he tried to do, and he’d been successful thus far, but he couldn’t help waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He saw a turian sitting at the appointed corner table and joined him. Purgatory wasn’t exactly a clandestine meeting place, but enough suspicious things were happening simultaneously that no one really noticed another one.

“Sidonis?” asked Garrus, lowering his voice as much as he could while still audible over the pounding music.

The turian nodded, smiling slightly. “So you’re Archangel?”

Garrus grimaced at the nickname. “Seems so.” He straightened his back as an asari server approached the table.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked. Her voice was a deep bass, like another beat in the music.

“I’ll have a beer,” SIdonis said.

Garrus thought for a moment. “Turian brandy. Make it a double.”

“You got it,” the server said as she turned away.

“So,” Garrus said when she’d moved far enough away, “Why are you interested in joining my team?”

Sidonis suddenly looked tired. It settled in his features like a shadow cast over him. Garrus recognised it too easily. “I could use some honest money.” He chuckled to himself. “That’s hard to come by on Omega.”

“That’s for damn sure,” Garrus said, looking out over the dance floor. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Aria, standing in her alcove with her arms behind her back, observing. It was common knowledge that she ran Omega, and considering his business was ending her kind of business, he wondered if he’d ever have to face her down. He sure hoped not.

The server returned with a tray full of drinks, setting theirs down before swiftly moving to the rest of the tables. Garrus held his glass in both his hands, staring at the lights reflected in the brandy.

“Um,” Sidonis said. “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but...you were on the Normandy, weren’t you?”

Garrus didn’t lift his eyes from his drink. “Yeah. I don’t mind.”

“What was it like?”

Garrus tapped his fingers against the side of his glass. He remembered her doing the same. He took a long sip before answering. “She was—it was...enlightening.”

Sidonis’s mandibles flicked with surprise. “Enlightening?”

Garrus hummed. “I guess it’s not the word you’d expect to hear.”

“Not with her reputation.”

Garrus took another sip. “Before I met her, I was always trying to do the right thing and going about it the wrong way. Thought I was right and everyone else was wrong. She set me straight.”

“So forming a vigilante team to take out crime on Omega is the right way?” Sidonis’s eyes sparkled with a teasing laugh.

Garrus laughed under his breath. “I’m a slow learner.”

* * *

His eyes still flicked to the empty spaces in the corners of his visor display, looking for vitals that had long since gone out. He hadn’t protected his team, and now they were gone.

Well. All except one.

He liked to think Shepard would’ve made the same mistake. It felt somewhat sacreligious to think of her making mistakes, though. But hadn’t she taught him to trust? Hadn’t she taught him to rely on his team? This time, he thought, he should’ve listened to his own instinct over her voice in his head. Trusting people only lets them get close enough to hurt you.

Blaming Sidonis was easy, but useless. Sidonis was long gone, and Garrus was never getting off Omega alive. It was much more useful to blame himself. It was his fault he failed as a leader; it was his fault for trusting an untrustworthy person. And Shepard wouldn’t have made the same mistake, anyway. She saw people for what they really were before they’d even given her a reason to suspect anything. She would have known better.

The key around his neck burned the skin of his chest. He was comforted by the knowledge that Shepard could berate him for his failure soon.

Light glinted off something on the path leading to his hideout. He looked down through his rifle’s scope, expecting a mech or an armoured merc or something else he’d seen so many times in the past few hours that it was becoming tedious.

It had to be an illusion. Death was coming for him so swiftly that he was hallucinating, probably bleeding out in his armour and he hadn’t even noticed.

He looked again. It was Shepard. Her: not her ghost, not an illusion of her. It didn’t change the fact that he knew death was coming; he was just glad it was her coming to take him there.

She made her way into his base, taking out mercenaries on her way up to his loft. He didn’t recognise the two people she had with her, but he didn’t give them much thought.

She smiled without surprise when she saw him. “You know, Archangel, you didn’t have to fall to find me again.”

“Well, if there was another way, I couldn’t find it.” He hadn’t expected himself to be so bitter, but it was a fair thought. She was dead, or at least gone beyond his knowledge. How else was he supposed to find her except by joining her?

She bit her lip, casting her gaze down for a moment. “I understand.” She closed the gap between them—swiftly and silently as ever—and placed her open palm on his cheek. “But in the future, please trust that I am always coming back for you.”

It seemed a miracle that she was back from the dead, and Garrus didn’t think he could promise to believe in a miracle twice. But it was harder to say no to her when she was right in front of him, holding his gaze with her dark eyes, touching his skin with her shocking cold fingers.

“I’ll try.”

* * *

The Normandy had been rebuilt, and its energy felt different. The human crew still seemed to mostly ignore him, but something about the bones of the ship—something more than just the physical structure—had changed as well. It felt sharp, where the old ship had felt soft. It was bright where the old ship had been dark. No more shadowy corners for hiding in. Everything was thrown into relief.

The cargo bay was too quiet, now that he was the only one down there. The Mako had not been replaced, so he had to find something else to work on. The gun battery had enough background noise to drown out his own thoughts, and working on the guns was engaging enough.

The doors gently swished open behind him. He didn’t look up from his work as Shepard walked up next to him.

“Hey.”

He twisted his screwdriver once more, ensuring the bolt wouldn’t come loose. “Hi.”

“How are you feeling?” She looked at the bandages wrapped around the side of his face.

“Great, considering I caught a rocket with my face.”

She smiled sadly. “What were you doing on Omega?”

He closed the door to the panel he was working on and faced her. “Other than trying to join you?”

She crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her chin up. “Yes.”

He sighed, turning his back to the gun machinery and leaning against it, his eyes on the ceiling. “The Citadel is still the Citadel. I couldn’t make a difference there. Thought I could on Omega.”

“Seems to me like you did.”

He shook his head. The names scratched into his visor fleetingly flashed into his peripheral vision. “Not enough of one.”

She gave him that look again, the look that penetrated down to the bone. “Mm. Well,” she said, loosely intertwining her fingers with his, “I can’t promise it’ll be as much fun as Omega, but I could use a do-gooder on my current mission.”

“There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”

She grinned. “You don’t even know what it is yet.”

“I know.” His mandibles flicked once, in what would’ve seemed like decisive motion if it hadn’t been involuntary, and his face flushed.

Her eyes lowered to the key on the chain around his neck, and rose back up to meet his before she turned and left.

* * *

Garrus saw Shepard walking around the ship more than he remembered. Maybe it had more to do with him spending more time on a higher deck, but she had come down to the cargo bay to visit him and the other crew members before. She did less talking now, more watching. He wondered if everyone else could see the effort she put into masking her unease, or if it was just that he had known her before.

It was more than just the ship itself that felt different. He hadn’t realised at first, but the human crew was not made of the same people, except the doctor and the pilot. At first their similar disinterest in him felt the same, but it became clear that, much like the ship, something in the energy of their avoidance of him was different. The first crew had made him feel like a ghost in their midst, as if he didn’t exist at all. This crew acknowledged him, but they didn’t like him. From some it felt like distrust, from others it felt like envy, and from yet others it felt like contempt. He didn’t much care, though. He wasn’t there for them.

The lounge was still there, and his bottle of brandy remained in the same place. He poured himself a drink behind the bar, then moved around to sit down on the other side of it. He lifted his glass and closed his eyes as the sweet liquor flowed over his tongue, leaving a slight burn in his throat as he swallowed. The delicious burn lingered when he opened his eyes to see Shepard seated next to him.

“How are you settling in?” she asked, skipping a ‘hello.’

He responded with a casual half-shrug. “Could ask you the same thing.”

She laughed darkly, screwing the top off a bottle that appeared in her hands. She didn’t bother with a glass. “Well-spotted.”

“You don’t trust them.” A statement, not a question.

She shook her head. “I only trust those I choose. I didn’t choose them.”

Garrus had been so happy to have her back that he hadn’t devoted any time to thinking about the circumstances in which she had returned. He could tell the ship and crew were different, but he didn’t know why they were different, or how it had come to be the way it was. He didn’t know what had happened to her in the two years since he’d seen her last. There was a faint curiosity, but in truth, he didn’t care if he knew or not. The only thing that mattered was that she was there. How she got there wasn’t his concern.

She inhaled loudly, speaking in a sigh as she exhaled. “Anyway, we’ll deal with that later. There is someone here I did choose.”

She leaned toward him, brushing her fingertips from the tip of his shoulder across to his neck. The key on the chain around his neck was above his shirt, though he didn’t remember putting it there. Her fingers traced down his chest, over the key.

“Have you figured out what this goes to yet?”

* * *

Sidonis, too, came back from the dead. Although Garrus knew he hadn’t been dead in the first place. In truth, he had hoped Sidonis was dead. It would’ve been easier.

He wasn’t sure what he wanted Shepard’s response to be. Part of him hoped she would stop him. Part of him hoped she would indulge him, if only just this one last time. He knew what she would want him to do, and he wished that was what he wanted.

The thing Garrus had found about becoming a better person was that it didn’t actually feel any better. Anger was comfortable and revenge felt right, like old, worn-in clothes that fit so perfectly it felt like he’d been born in them. Forgiveness didn’t make him feel good. Mercy didn’t bring him peace.

He was hardly conscious of the explanations and excuses that tumbled from his mouth as he told her the story. He could feel the dark surrounding him, or emanating from within him—he wasn’t sure which.

“Okay,” she said.

He paused, looking at her as if he hadn’t seen her there before. She looked pale and stern.

“Okay?”

“Okay,” she repeated. “We’ll go to the Citadel.”

He frowned. “And...when we get there–”

Her eyes locked with his, her intense gaze leaving him feeling flayed to the bone. “I’ll let you handle this the way you want to handle it,” she said quietly, and left the room without further comment.

It felt like a test. He resented it. He wanted to fail it out of spite, just to prove he could.

But when it came down to it, he found he wasn’t that man anymore.

Death didn’t solve problems. Killing Sidonis wouldn’t bring his team back. Sidonis was destroying himself beneath the guilt he carried, knowing he’d done wrong. Sidonis wanted to make things right. Garrus wanted to make things right.

“Tell him to go,” Garrus told Shepard, blinking back hot tears as he lowered his rifle.

He heard her through the comm as she spoke to Sidonis. “Don’t waste this chance,” she told him.

“I won’t,” said Sidonis. “Tell Garrus...tell Garrus I’m going to make it up to him, somehow.”

Garrus couldn’t bring himself to watch Sidonis go. He heard Shepard’s voice telling him she was proud of him. He didn’t respond.

* * *

Garrus told her he needed some time alone and locked himself in the gun battery. Locking the door was more of a matter of principle than a necessity. None of the crew would bother him, and he was sure Shepard could get in if she wanted to.

Letting go of vengeance left him unsure of who he was without it. It would seem to be the case that if he was no longer a bad person, he must then necessarily be a good one, but that didn’t feel right. He didn’t truly think he’d been a bad person before. He did bad things, but what was true both in the past and in the present was that he wanted what was good.

She had seen that in him from the beginning. She, so widely reviled and worshiped, knew what it was to be seen as a monster. And in her absence, he had tried to become the monster he missed. But she wasn’t a monster, and neither was he. The world could damn them if it wanted. He didn’t care what anyone thought of him anymore, except for her. She had always seen him for what he truly was, before he even realised what he truly was. She knew he was good, despite all appearances, and he knew she was good, despite her reputation. And her belief in him had turned him into a person who wanted more—more than vengeance, more than violent justice. He wanted the world to learn not to need that. He wanted the world to be good. He wanted to help her guide the world toward the good he knew they were capable of. He wanted his hand in hers, her fingers clasped around his, her lips on his skin.

He wondered if she knew how long he had loved her back. Knowing her, she knew long before he did.

He unlocked the door and strode purposefully across the deck, making his way between the crew members in stops and starts. Finally, he reached the elevator, and hit the button for the top deck.

The elevator door opened onto a small, dim hallway, with a closed door at the end. A large ruby glistened on the doorknob, above a small keyhole. He took the chain from around his neck and held the key in his hand, watching the matching ruby glisten in the light. He placed the key in the door and turned. The lock clicked, and he opened the door.


	3. phlegethon

Garrus felt a strange sense of detachment watching his planet burn. He wasn’t wholly numb to the tragedy; he was worried sick for his father and sister, desperately trying to escape. But for himself, he felt nothing. He watched orange fire engulf the place of his birth from the cold, blue dirt of its moon. The soldiers all around him were doing their best to uphold the stoic bravery culturally expected of them, but he could feel their sadness and anxiety radiating from them. He could see life now, in a way he didn’t have the words for, but he was sure it was somehow Shepard’s influence.

The soldiers talked amongst themselves of pleasant things to keep their minds off the unpleasantness below. Garrus listened, but did not engage, as they talked of family pets, favourite foods, and past loves. He felt eyes turn toward him as the latter subject was raised. The more attention shifted toward him, the less the soldiers spoke. Finally, one of them ventured to ask.

“Sir?”

Garrus gave the soldier a feigned inquisitive look—one that said he knew what the question would be, but the question had to be spoken to be answered.

“What was she like?”

He smiled. Turning his face down, he closed his eyes and called her to his mind’s eye. She burned, blood red and full of light.

“She isn’t what you expect her to be.”

He opened his eyes to see his audience fixed on him with rapt attention. The ridiculousness of it almost made him laugh. They wanted him to explain the unexplainable, and he had enough trouble with the explainable.

“She’s...kind. Merciful, strong, brave. Sorry, I’m not much of a storyteller.”

A soldier sitting far enough away from Garrus that he had to shout piped in. “Was she scary?”

At that, Garrus did laugh. “Only if you’re not on her side. If you’re one of hers…” The last word made his heart beat faster in his chest. “She’s the best leader you could ask for.”

“Is that all she was?”

A collective chuckle came from the soldiers at the knowing question. It seemed the whole galaxy knew about them, even before Garrus had figured it out. No doubt Shepard’s reputation had hurried that particular news along; the people love a story, and what story is more compelling than death and her lover?

The deep metallic screech of a Reaper tore through the sky, absolving Garrus of the need to reply. Immediately the regiment leapt to their feet, readying themselves for a battle that was beyond the scope of anything for which they could ever be ready.

He wouldn’t despair, though. Not this time. He knew better.

The waves of Reaper forces felt like the heads of the Hydra; for every wave defeated, three more came back in their place. In some ways, he was grateful for the inability to rest and let his mind wander. He was too busy to allow himself to become preoccupied with wondering when she would show up. It was impossible to be on a battlefield without thinking of her, though, even if just in passing.

He felt her arrive before he got the call to headquarters. His heart rose in his chest as if floating on a rising tide. Walking through the barricade, he immediately saw her flash of red hair in the distance. She was deep in discussion with the general, but she caught Garrus out of the corner of her eye and smirked. He took painfully slow steps, fighting the urge to run to her.

The general said something he didn’t hear as he and Shepard looked at each other.

“You’re alive,” she said, reaching for his hand. It wasn’t surprise, or relief, but a statement of fact.

He felt like an excited pet, wanting to tell her that he had believed her this time, he had never doubted she was coming back for him, and wasn’t he a good boy for waiting so patiently? It was too absurd to say any of that aloud, but, judging from her expression, he figured she knew anyway. He clasped her hand in both of his. “I’m hard to kill. You should know that.”

She laughed fondly. “I see you found a sense of humour while you were gone.”

“I won’t make it a habit.” He kissed her hand, keeping his eyes on hers. His enthusiastic joy at her return quickly mellowed into something equally passionate but less frantic, and she returned his gaze with an equal intensity.

Unfortunately, it was neither the time nor the place to act on that. The Reapers wanted to kill them all, and Shepard was working to stop them. Garrus, finally, didn’t need it explained to him. There was a problem that needed solving; he didn’t know what exactly it was yet, but he knew Shepard wanted to solve it in her own way, and the Reapers wanted to solve it with extinction. It was all a bit vague, but what he knew more clearly than anything was that he was on Shepard’s side.

She nodded decisively, ending her conversation with the general. “We’ll be in touch when we find the Primarch,” she said, shaking his hand before turning to Garrus. “You coming?”

Garrus re-loaded his rifle with a grin. “Are you kidding? I’m right behind you.”

* * *

The Normandy was different every time he returned. It hadn’t changed as much this time as it had the last, but it was less of a curiosity; it felt comfortable, in a way it hadn’t felt either time before. It felt like home.

The gun battery was drenched in blood red light, like being wrapped up in her hair. Every interface, every console, every button unlocked at the touch of his hand. Everything was just as he left it, untouched by the crew. His work awaited him, and only him.

Something in the air changed, and he looked up from the console. She appeared, almost indistinguishable in the red light. “Welcome back,” she said, hovering at the bottom of the steps that led from the deeper battery up to where he stood.

“Can’t keep me away.” He closed the distance between them, joining her in the lower part of the room.

Pressure built in his chest as she looked up at him through heavy-lidded eyes. Her fingertips skated up his waist, and he felt a shiver run through him. She lingered on the key hanging from the chain around his neck. “Promise?” she asked.

He wrapped his arms around her, pressing her close, and whispered, as he leaned down, “Promise.”

She was somehow cold and hot at the same time, a forceful breeze on a scalding summer day. Her lips should not be this soft; her body should not be this inviting. She kissed him hungrily, pressing his face into hers harder with a hand at the back of his head. Her tongue scraped past his sharp teeth. She moaned into him, and her breath and the taste of her blood filled his mouth.

If every reunion were like this, he thought, he could handle having to leave.

* * *

If any place in the galaxy felt devoid of life, it was Tuchanka. The wind whistled through abandoned stone on worn, flat plains. Even as it felt dead, it crawled with life, though not all of the sort one would hope.

The way Wrex grinned as he saw Shepard and Garrus approach made Garrus’s face flush. He wasn’t ashamed of himself or of Shepard, but the obvious change in the way others perceived him always struck some sort of nerve.

“Thanks for the assist,” Wrex grinned, shaking Shepard’s hand. Reaper blood dripped off his arms, but he didn’t seem to notice.

Shepard wiped blood off her own forehead. “You’re not on my ship anymore, but you’re still one of mine.”

Wrex grunted. “Speaking of yours. Good to see you, too, Garrus.”

“Likewise,” Garrus replied with a nod.

Wrex’s grin widened as he looked from Garrus to Shepard and back. “Finally figured out why she keeps you around, huh?”

Garrus blinked. “Did _everyone_ know except me?”

“Pretty much.” Wrex’s attention shifted toward his troops, and he turned around to bark a few orders before returning. “Work, work, work. Anyway, suppose that’s why you guys are here. That, and Shepard here can’t stand the competition.”

Shepard’s shoulders tightened at Wrex’s last sentence. Garrus’s brows knit with concern, but before he could say anything, Wrex broke the silence with a hearty laugh.

“I’m just messing with you.” Wrex clapped Shepard on the back jovially, and the tension left her. To the untrained eye, it would have seemed she loosened up, but Garrus knew she was just hiding it for now, while she had work to do. “Come on, I’ll tell you the plan.”

* * *

He didn’t need to use the key anymore, especially when walking with her to her cabin, but he liked to. He quickly beat her out of the elevator to unlock the door, and turned to smile at her behind him as he opened it. She returned the smile, but she was no longer masking her weariness.

He forgot sometimes that strength was not a part of her personality, but a requirement of her job. It was not something she did naturally, but something she did out of obligation. She never complained about it, and most people never noticed, but he saw the toll it took on her. On Tuchanka, he had seen the smile on her upturned face as the genophage cure spread across the planet, and he wished he could give her that unfettered joy all the time. That wasn’t in the job description, though.

She moved past him and sat on the edge of the bed, her posture sinking. He picked up their used wine glasses from the table, not bothering to wash them before refilling them. Sitting next to her, he pressed her glass into her hand.

“Hey.” He nudged her with his shoulder, making her sway slightly on the spot. “We won.”

“Mm.” She took a long sip, closing her eyes as she leaned her head back.

His eyes searched her tired face. “What’s wrong?” he asked in a hushed voice.

She rolled her shoulders one after the other, groaning at the stretch. Flexing the fingers of her free hand, she cracked the knuckles one by one as she responded. “It’s what Wrex said. About me taking out the Reapers because they’re competition.”

Garrus had wondered if Wrex’s implication was what he thought it was. He wasn’t sure it was, really, but evidently, Shepard did. “Wrex doesn’t mean—”

“I know, but other people do.” She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and holding her wine glass from the top.

He rubbed her shoulder one-handed. “People are always going to be wrong. You can’t let it get to you.”

“I do, though.” She looked up through the skylight in the ceiling of her cabin and heaved a sigh. Lowering her gaze, she stretched her neck from side to side and gazed into middle distance. “I’m not death. Sometimes it’s useful to have the reputation, I guess. Easier to get things done when people fear you. But they shouldn’t fear me. I’m just a caretaker.”

Suddenly she seemed so small sitting next to him. Her bones were visible under her skin, and shadows settled heavily on her face. He had loved her so long he had forgotten how most people thought of her. The soldiers on Menae had reminded him somewhat, but he easily pushed it from his mind. She was so slight, so loyal and protective, so caring and full of love.

“For what it’s worth,” he said in a hushed voice, “I know who you are.”

Her eyes sparkled as she smiled up at him. It was the soft, sweet smile she never showed anyone else; it lacked the pride in her work on Tuchanka, and the viciousness of her battle-worn grin. It was, for once, no more and no less than what showed on her face: content. “You’re the only one whose opinion matters anyway.”

She reached up, tracing his scarred face with her fingertips before gently pulling him down to kiss her. The taste of wine lingered on her lips. She moved against him, climbing into his lap, and he kissed the salt dried on her cheek as her arms wrapped around his neck.

His fingers gripped her hips just below the hem of her loose tank. Her smooth skin was both cool and hot to the touch, like a marble statue blazing with inner fire. Lowering her hand across her body, she brushed against his fingers as she pulled her shirt off one-handed. Their cheeks touched and she turned her head to kiss him, moving up to press her lips to his forehead as her fingers fumbled with the bottom of his shirt.

Watching his own hand caress her curves as if he were a spectator, he catalogued every difference between them, taking notes on imaginary paper. Where he was rough, she was soft. Where he was angled, she was rounded. Where he was hot, she was cold. The meeting of their bodies created a perfect median, and he felt them melting into everything, the fabric of the universe no longer something in which they existed, but something made of them.

* * *

Garrus hadn’t been to Eden Prime the first time. Shepard forgot this, and kept commenting on the changes to him as if he’d understand. He didn’t correct her; he liked the idea that she forgot he hadn’t always been there. He wasn’t sure if that was what was really what it was, but he liked it, regardless.

Despite everything, Garrus found he liked Eden Prime. It had a sense of eternity about it. The human colony’s establishments were a flimsy blip on the radar. Eden Prime existed long before them, and would continue long after.

“I never saw it in sunlight,” Shepard said, standing on the edge of a cliff and surveying the landscape.

The sunshine sparkled on the lake, and soft winds rustled the long grass. It was easy to see why this planet had been a draw for civilisations throughout time.

“I’ve got it,” Liara said from the console. She hit a few buttons and stood back. The metal platform doors opened and a pod rose from beneath them.

Shepard approached it, her eyes flashing between their usual reddish brown and the green that Prothean artefacts effected in them. She placed a hand on the pod and it opened, with no obvious effort on her part. The icy mist dissipated to reveal a Prothean, blinking in the light.

“Remember, it’s been 50,000 years for us, but it’s only been a few minutes for him,” Liara said.

The Prothean fired a biotic pulse and ran, but fell to his knees before he got very far. Shepard, hardly scathed by his panicked attack, followed him.

“How many others?” the Prothean asked, without looking at her behind him.

“Just you.”

The Prothean did not rise from his knees, and Shepard did not stoop down. She spoke, looming over him. “I have an offer for you.”

“You have nothing that I want,” the Prothean said.

“Tell me what you want and we’ll see.”

“I wish to join my people.”

Shepard crossed her arms over her chest. “I can arrange that. But would you like to take a few Reapers down with you?”

The Prothean glared at her over his shoulder. Her expression remained unchanged. He stood, turning to face her. “This is your offer?”

“Yes.”

The Prothean looked Shepard up and down, not as if he was looking at her, but more reading her. He snorted a sharp laugh to himself, but remained silent for a moment before speaking again. “I accept.”

Shepard looked at Liara and Garrus, nodding her head toward the ship as she and the Prothean began walking toward it.

“Goodness,” Liara said.

Garrus looked down at her. Her brows were furrowed, though whether it was with sadness or consternation was unclear. “Not what you expected?”

“You could say that.”

They began walking toward the ship in silence. Garrus didn’t notice for a few steps that Liara had suddenly stopped. He turned around.

Liara worried at her lip. “I just don’t _understand._”

“You don’t have to understand everything,” Garrus replied. He could only manage a half-mocking tone in the face of her anxiety.

She looked up at him with a half-smile that quickly faded. “I know he’s lost everything he knew, but...why wouldn’t he want to live? Learn this new world with us? Why would he throw this opportunity away?”

Garrus’s furrowed brows eased. Liara was so full of life, it didn’t surprise him that she couldn’t understand the Prothean’s perspective; she found too much joy in this world to contemplate anything beyond. “He’s not throwing anything away. At least, he doesn’t see it that way. There’s more for him on the other side.”

“Like what?”

“Being with the people he cares about.”

Liara didn’t say it, but Garrus could almost hear her thoughts, wondering why the Prothean couldn’t learn to care about them.

Garrus walked back toward her and awkwardly patted her back in what he hoped was a comforting manner. “Death isn’t the end. It’s just different.”

“Mm.” Liara obviously didn’t believe him, but Garrus couldn’t explain any better. Perhaps it was Liara’s relative youth, or more likely his own inability, but he wasn’t sure how one would go about explaining to a person with a thousand-year life-span that life didn’t hold every answer, no matter how long you search for it. He imagined she would take it up with Shepard, and he was grateful for that.

* * *

Blood poured into his face from the gash in his forehead, casting a red haze over everything he could see. Bemusedly, he considered how well-suited Shepard was to being all in red. She crouched over him—he realised he was sitting, not standing anymore—and yelled into her comm, “I need an evac, now!”

“Shepard,” he whispered, raising a wobbly arm in her general direction, grasping at the air around her.

“Hang on,” she commanded.

She and the soldier on his other side lifted him, struggling to carry his weight toward the descending ship. He turned his head and tried to smile at her, but she wasn’t at his side anymore. She was standing in front of him, still planetside as he and the soldier reached the top of the ramp into the ship.

“You’ve gotta get out of here,” Shepard said, solemnly locking eyes with him.

“And you’ve gotta be kidding me,” Garrus growled, his words slurring. He tried to wipe the blood out of his eyes, but his hand missed.

“Don’t argue, Garrus.”

He blinked a few times, clearing the blurriness from his vision. She looked at him with a mix of determination and sadness, steel glinting behind her eyes. She reached out and took his hand, and, throwing his shoulder out from the soldier’s grasp, he clasped his other hand on hers, gripping too tightly, he knew, but he was beyond caring.

“I don’t want to leave you. Not again,” he said. His voice cracked unexpectedly.

She placed her hand on the side of his face and he pressed into it. He knew he couldn’t affect the outcome now. They were going to be separated again. He had found the most recent separation, surprisingly, the easiest; he had been almost academic about it, as far as he was capable of being so, trusting that he knew them and their situation well enough now that he had no reason to be concerned. On their reunion, he felt invincible. He knew they would be separated again, but he had no idea he still carried this uncertainty and fear beneath the strong, calm demeanour he had built. After everything, he was still only as strong as the hand he held.

“You know I’m coming back for you,” said Shepard. Her slight smile was steady. He knew her strength was often a mask, but he didn’t want to look closely enough to find out if it was this time. She believed they would find each other again. And he believed in her.

“I know. That doesn’t make it easier.” He pressed his forehead against hers.

“I love you so much, Garrus,” she whispered.

He leaned back enough to see a tear roll down her cheek. He brushed it away with his thumb. “I love you, too,” he replied, and leaned down to kiss her.

He forgot, for a moment, that the world was exploding all around them. They broke apart suddenly when a projectile hit close enough to them to blow them back with its force.

“Get out of here!” she yelled, backing away. She didn’t let go of his hand until she couldn’t reach him.

He watched her run toward the beam of light until the ship’s door closed.

* * *

Garrus didn’t sleep for a while. A few days, probably. He didn’t keep track. It doesn’t make much of a difference in space—not unless you want it to.

There was work to do. The ship was broken, and he could fix a ship. He threw himself into the work, helping the crew with one task, then another, and another. Each task got him closer to her, and that was all he thought about.

When he finally crashed, he crashed in her cabin. He hadn’t yet made his way back to the gun battery since the Normandy’s crash landing, and he hadn’t slept in his cot there for months, anyway. Auto-pilot, more than anything, powered the steps that led him to her door. For a moment, he was surprised not to find her there.

He didn’t know how long he slept, but when he awoke, he went immediately back to work. Time continued like this: he worked until he couldn’t, he slept until he was ready to work again. Eventually, the ship was able to make small jumps. Her pillow no longer smelled of her. The work continued between jumps, and they managed to travel farther each time. When they encountered damaged relays, they joined the teams fixing them before moving on. News passed among work crews in a small trickle. Everyone they encountered was surprised the Normandy had survived, and there were rumours that Shepard had survived out there somewhere, too. There were always rumours about Shepard, though.

Garrus found that allowing himself to think about anything other than his work was too dangerous. It led him either to hope or despair, and neither were particularly useful. He tried to focus on the most efficient angle of the hammer in his hand.

Bruised and exhausted, they arrived, eventually, at the Citadel. It, like seemingly everyone and everything else in the galaxy, was in the midst of being rebuilt: not as broken as once it was, but not yet back to normal. There was a weariness to everyone, from the chef at the ramen stand in Zakera Ward to the C-Sec officers taking census at the docks, but a different weariness to the one they had carried during the war. It was calmer, in a way—less the frazzled chaos of having too much to do in too little time, and more the triumphant peace of a tiring job finally, and with much effort, completed.

Arriving at the Citadel felt like the end of a journey, but without their captain, no one was quite sure of anything. They had no orders, they didn’t know where to go next, or even if there was a next place to which they would be sent. Garrus was not officially the acting captain, but the crew deferred to him regardless. For lack of any other ideas, he told them to keep fine-tuning the ship, and wait.

He felt that he had become less good at waiting than he had been the last time. Still, it was all he was sure he needed to do.

* * *

Every flash of red turned his head. Every neon sign, or glint of light on a stranger’s sunglasses, or flashy skycar. He never grew immune to it. He supposed it was optimistic of him. Optimistic, or trusting. Perhaps a little of both.

Either way, it paid off.

The trees in the Citadel Tower this time were gold and orange and red. It was the red he could not stop staring at, and suddenly, something that was red but not an autumnal leaf.

“Guess you came for me this time,” Shepard said with a smirk.

His breath caught in his throat. He convinced himself he was hallucinating, dreaming her into existence. Her heels clicked on the floor as she walked up the hallway and wrapped her arms around him. Closing his eyes, he pressed his face into the side of her neck. Her skin was cool on his, and she smelled faintly of smoke and the sickly sweet scent of plants decaying.

“You’re here,” he whispered.

She held him tighter. “You’re here,” she echoed.

He kissed every inch of her he could reach, up her neck and over her cheekbones. The meeting of their lips felt like that long-forgotten projectile that hit the ground at their parting; the dark behind his closed eyes flooded with light as the earth shook beneath his feet.

“I don’t ever want to leave again,” he said. His voice was hoarse with disuse.

She was quiet for a moment before responding. “You know you’ll have to.”

Anger and sadness were somewhere in him, bubbling in a simmer at her reminder, but he couldn’t bring himself to recognise them at that moment. Not when he was so happy just to have her for that moment.

“You’ll always come back for me,” he said. It was almost a command, as if he needed to demand it of her.

She let out a low, musical laugh. “Always, my love.”

A chilled air curled around their feet as they walked hand-in-hand toward the elevator, and headed back to their ship.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Dreamwidth as zeusgoesfishing and Pillowfort/Twitter as littleleotas ♥


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